One idea was of land protection. President William McKinley set aside these mountains and wooded areas as a Forest Reserve in 1901. Then Theodore Roosevelt renamed it a Game Preserve in 1905. It is the oldest managed wildlife preserve in the United States.

In October 1907, fifteen bison were donated from the New York Zoological Society and arrived at the Preserve via the Cache railhead. This was the beginning of the re-stocking effort at the Refuge.

Rocky Mountain elk were re-located from Jackson Hole, Wyoming in an effort to re-establish elk to the prairie. After turkeys were transplanted from Missouri and Texas, the land once again resounded with gobbles, bugles, and bellows.